Ice Hotel in Quebec City, Canada lets you live like a slushy

The Ice Hotel in Quebec City, Canada, lasts through spring and then melts into a puddle. (Ice Hotel)

It sounds more like a dare than a vacation: Spend a night in a hotel with no bathrooms or amenities, where the temperature inside is kept at 12 degrees below the point where water freezes. The bone-rattling experience is less suited to a human being than a slushy.

That's the lunacy, and the theoretical thrill, behind the Ice Hotel — or Hotel de Glace as it's known in the incarnation located just outside the French-speaking locale of Quebec City, Canada.

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While the concept of an Ice Hotel originated in northern Sweden in 1990, later spawning versions in other, mainly Nordic countries, the only corollary you'll find in this hemisphere lies in Quebec. Between December and March there it's reliably frosty enough to maintain a structure made entirely of H2O. Yes, that means each Spring the whole thing melts to a puddle, necessitating a total rebuild.

Before spending my own hypothermia-threatening night in the place, every person I spoke to asked me why I would stay there. At the same time, every one of those people made me swear I'd report back every detail.

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Parkas are always in vogue at this frosty getaway place. (Ice Hotel)

Clearly, surviving the night here awards the participant a prized anecdote, as well as bragging rights, making the hotel a viable business despite some severe, baked-in limitations. A blatant novelty experience, no customer spends more than one night — and very few ever return. Despite those challenges, this year marks the 18th incarnation of Hotel de Glace, which has been located in various areas near Quebec City over that time.

For the last two years, it has been situated a 3-minute walk from the Valcartier Hotel, a heated structure where Ice-bound guests prepare themselves for the experience/ordeal. That's also where you can crash in a dorm-like room (a "coward's corner" as I call it) should frostbite blister the skin by night.

Before venturing into the tundra, guests receive a glut of warnings and suggestions, although, naturally, all of that gets jumbled in your mind once you're in your chill-chamber. If you need a refresher course, there's a video loop that repeats some of the basic info, though the actress demonstrating it on tape contradicts the single most important warning.

The property's Ice Chapel offers a site for mediation -- and weddings. (Ice Hotel)

Counterintuitively, we're told to wear as little clothing in the room as possible. The actress in the demonstration sports layer upon layer. The bed in each room consists of a giant block of ice, topped by a board, a mattress and a spread. What you actually snooze in is a special sleep bag that can protect you down to minus 30 degrees. You're meant to slip into the bag as close to naked as possible, because any clothing you wear creates humidity which makes you cold. Otherwise, your natural body will work with the sleep bag to keep you toasty.

Guests don't get to test this for themselves until 9 p.m. In the meantime, Hotel de Glace lets you, and any number of day-trippers, tour the sprawling, Igloo-like structure to enjoy the special ice sculptures that adorn many of the 41 rooms.

To me, the craft of ice sculpting lands somewhere below the art of miming but the artisanship here is ace and the overall hotel structure has a labyrinthine allure, as well as a wintery quietude, that feels enveloping. As you tramp around the densely packed snow floor, protected by four foot thick walls of white, there's a hallowed ambience. It's mirrored in a separate Ice Chapel, located on the property, designed for weddings. Inside the main structure, you can have a drink at an Ice Bar. The polar temperature gave my vodka, served in an ice cube glass, a syrupy consistency that soothed.

Weather-ready sleep bags protect you even when it's minus 30 degrees, and the more naked you are inside one the warmer you'll be. (Ice Hotel)

The best advice I got in preparing for bed was to get your core as warm as possible by plunging into one of the hot tubs located in the sub-freezing outside. The problem is, to get to the tubs you have to go back to the warm hotel, strip into just swim trunks, bathrobe and slippers, and then walk back out in what, on my night, was an 8-degree assault. But once you slip into the tub, it's bliss, with the steamy water pulsing as you gaze up at a velvet black sky. If you rise from the water, steam wafts from your every pore, emboldening you to brave your icy fate.

Back inside the warm hotel you dry yourself off avidly, then put back on heavy clothing and march back to your arctic cave. All went swimmingly as I took off my clothes in my chilled room and slipped into the sleeping bag, which soon became cozy. "I got this," I thought.

Cut to several hours later: 3 a.m. Being a man of a certain age, the rest room beckoned. I had already memorized the route from my room to the outdoor port-a-potty. Unfortunately, amid the tedious process of getting myself out of the tight sleeping bag, putting back on my now stone-cold clothes, trudging outside to do the deed, then lurking back, stripping off my clothes again, and struggling mightily to get back into the bag, a chill set in that would not leave.

Then came a fatal mistake, enabled by my ignorance of even the most elementary science. I repeatedly blew my hot breath into the bag, creating heavy humidity, making it hard to recreate my earlier oven effect. After a pained hour of toughing it out, I did the walk of shame back to the dorms for a sad refuge.

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The next bleary-eyed day, I quizzed some other guests. They all sailed through the night brilliantly. I did, however, get the promised anecdote out of the experience, as well as an important lesson. In the end, my enemy wasn't the elements. It was the cold reality that nature calls.

If you go ...

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Stay: For Hotel de Glace info, and reservations, check info@hoteldeglace-canada.com. Rooms from $199 per person. Through March 25, but you have plenty of time to plan for next year.

Fly:Air Canada to Montreal, followed by a fleet 26-minute connecting flight to Quebec City